President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine has signed the law on making amendments to the Budget Code (No 9084). A statement on the Verkhovna Rada’s website says the document was returned with the signature of the president on December 22. The amendments to the Budget Code were approved by the parliament at second reading on November 22. In particular, the changes allow for agricultural produces to use up to 20% of state funding they receive for purchasing special wagons for transportation of grains and equipment for producing bioethanol and electric energy out of biomasses.
At present, the Budget Code stipulates that 15% of state funding in 2018 and 20% of state funding in 2019 are to be used by agricultural producers to purchase farming equipment from local manufacturers. In the new edition of this norm, “20%” is replaced with “up to 20%.”
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko said that he had signed the law on the state budget of Ukraine for 2019.
“I have signed a budget law,” the president said, speaking at the 2nd Ukrainian Women’s Congress in Kyiv on Friday.
The VEON international telecom group has appointed Alexander Komarov President of Kyivstar, the leading Ukrainian mobile communications operator.
Komarov in July 2018 was appointed acting President of Kyivstar and replaced Peter Chernyshov. He also runs the post of CEO of Beeline Kazakhstan.
“In Ukraine, Kyivstar is a national success story and I am convinced that with Alexander [Komarov] at the helm the company will continue to be the leading provider of connectivity and internet services in Ukraine,” VEON reported on Thursday, citing VEON’s Executive Chairperson Ursula Burns.
Komarov, born in 1972, graduated from the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, began his career in 1994 at the Kyiv Research Center of the Military Institute of Management and Communications, from 1997 to 2002 worked for Globalstar in marketing and sales. In 2002, he was invited to the post of business development director at Adell Saatchi & Saatchi (Video International Kyiv), in 2004 he became CEO of this advertising agency, and later headed the Video International in Ukraine, a group of companies.
In 2007-2013, Komarov was CEO of a large Ukrainian marketing company GroupM. In July 2013, he received an invitation from Kazakhstan from Beeline and was appointed Chief Commercial Officer, and in January 2016 he headed the company.
Kyivstar is the largest Ukrainian mobile communications operator. According to latest data, its subscribers’ base is around 26.6 million.
VEON international group (earlier VimpelCom) is the shareholder in Kyivstar. The group’s shares are listed on NASDAQ (New York).
Yuliya Tymoshenko, the leader of the All-Ukrainian Union Batkivschyna (Fatherland), has been on the top of presidential ratings in opinion polls, followed by President Petro Poroshenko and showman Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to the results of a recent poll conducted by Sociological Group Rating from September to October 2018, 17% of the people polled who said they had made their choice and were willing to go to vote said they have decided to vote for Tymoshenko as president. Poroshenko and Zelensky are supported by 10% of those polled each.
Anatoliy Hrytsenko, the leader of the Civil Position party, got 9% of the vote, Yuriy Boyko of the Opposition Platform — For Life received 8%, and Vadym Rabinovich of the same platform got 5%.
Some 5% of those polled said they would vote for Oleh Lyashko, the leader of the Radical Party, another 4% supported the singer and civil activist Sviatoslav Vakarchuk.
Among all the people polled, Tymoshenko received support from 14% of the people, Poroshenko and Zelensky got 8% each, and Hrytsenko received 7%.
The poll entitled “The Dynamics of Socio-Political Views in Ukraine” was conducted from September 28 to October 14, 2018, by Sociological Group Rating by order of the International Republican Institute (IRI.)
A total of 2,400 people aged 18 and above were polled across Ukraine in formal face-to-face interviews. The non-sampling error is no more than 2%.
Some 72% of Ukrainians are ready to support a woman candidate in the presidential elections if the party they trust nominated her as a presidential candidate, according to a study by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) conducted in October-November 2018. Only 36% of respondents expressed readiness to support a Jewish candidate, and 26% said they would vote for a dark-skinned candidate.
“Compared to 2011, when we first conducted such a survey, the support of women and Jews remained almost unchanged, while more people, from 18% to 26%, said they would support a dark-skinned candidate, KIIS said.
The study was similar to that conducted by Gallup in the United States since 1937. At the same time, the report notes that in 2015, for each of these three questions (about women, Jews and blacks), more than 90% of Americans (92%, 91% and 92%, respectively) said they were ready to vote for them.
However, previously these figures were lower in the United States. “Attitudes of Americans towards women candidates increased as a whole. Ukrainian data correspond to American data from the early 1970s,” KIIS said.
Ukrainian attitudes towards candidates of Jewish nationality and blacks are significantly lower than they were in the United States for the entire observation period. In particular, in 1937 only 46% of Americans responded positively to a question about Jewish candidates, and 37% of respondents answered positively to a question about dark-skinned candidates in 1958, when it was asked in interviews.
The all-Ukrainian public opinion poll of KIIS was conducted from October 26 to November 8, 2018. Some 2,044 people living in 110 settlements throughout Ukraine were questioned in a personal interview. The margin of error of the poll does not exceed 3.3%.
More than 20% of Ukrainians polled have said that they are going to vote for Yuliya Tymoshenko, the leader of the All-Ukrainian Union Batkivschyna (Fatherland) party, in the upcoming presidential elections in Ukraine in 2019, a poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, the Razumkov Center and the Sociological Group Rating shows. According to the result of the poll, 21% of those polled are ready to vote for Tymoshenko for the next president of Ukraine.
She is followed by showman Volodymyr Zelensky (11%), the incumbent president Petro Poroshenko (10%), and the leader of the Civic Position party Anatoliy Hrytsenko (10%).
Then comes one of the leaders of the Opposition Platform for Life Yury Boiko (9%), followed by the leader of the Radical Party Oleh Lyashko (8%), rockstars Svyatoslav Vakarchuk (6%), and MP Yevhen Murayev (5%).
The anti-rating is led by Poroshenko as more than a half of Ukrainians are not going to vote for him under any circumstances.
The poll was jointly conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, the Razumkov Center and the Sociological Group Rating from October 19 to November 2, 2018. A total of 10,000 people aged from 18 and up were polled in all the regions of Ukraine except for Crimea and Russia-occupied territories in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The statistical margin of error is no more than 1%.
